This past year was marked by ever more significant data breaches, growing cybersecurity regulatory requirements at the state and federal levels and continued challenges in harmonizing international privacy and cybersecurity regulations. We expect each of these trends to continue in 2018.

As we begin this New Year, here is list of the top 10 privacy and cybersecurity issues for 2018: (more…)

On 26 July 2017, the Court of Justice of the EU (“Court”) issued its Opinion on the proposed EU-Canada Agreement on the transfer and processing of Passenger Name Record data (“PNR Data”). The opinion, issued by the Court’s Grand Chamber, confirms that the Court accepts the necessity of processing large amounts of personal data to protect against terrorism in general. However, in order to ensure compliance with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (“the Charter”), the Court will scrutinize the details of any EU legislative act to ensure that no data are retained or accessed without a clear link to the underlying justification of combating terrorism. (more…)

From Monday August 1, 2016, companies will be able to self-certify under the EU-US Privacy Shield (www.privacyshield.gov). The Privacy Shield was adopted on July 12, 2016 and is intended as a replacement to the now invalidated Safe Harbor framework. Companies preparing to self-certify their adherence to the Privacy Shield Principles should carefully review the associated documentation to understand the new requirements and consider carrying out a gap analysis against their existing privacy program. This is particularly important given the potential for increased enforcement action from the US Federal Trade Commission against participating companies that fail to comply with the Principles. (more…)

The Article 29 Working Party, on July 26, 2016 issued a statement on the final form of the EU-US Privacy Shield, which was formally adopted on July 12, 2016. Speaking at a press conference, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, chairman of the Article 29 Working Party, stated that the EU data protection authorities would not launch legal action of their own initiative in the next year but instead will wait until after the first annual review: “the first joint review will be a time in which we will make an evaluation of the Privacy Shield and also a time where additional propositions could be made … we want to be provided with additional clarification, additional evidence, possibly changes in the legislation.” (more…)

On April 13, the Article 29 Working Party announced that it had completed its assessment of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield documentation. The announcement was followed by the release of a 58-page Opinion on the European Commission’s draft adequacy decision on the Privacy Shield.

The much-anticipated documentation for the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, a new framework on transatlantic data flows, was published by the European Commission on February 29, 2016. The framework now will undergo a process of review and approval, including by the EU’s Article 29 Working Party, which is due to finish its review by the end of March 2016. If approved, it will take effect after an implementation period, during which all companies that wish to use the Privacy Shield as a basis for data transfers will have to certify in accordance with the new framework.

The Article 29 Working Party has confirmed in a statement that EU Standard Contractual Clauses and Binding Corporate Rules are still valid data transfer mechanisms for the time being. The announcement was made following a meeting held to discuss the consequences of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (“CJEU“) decision invalidating the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework and just one day after the European Commission announced that a political agreement had been reached on a new framework, the “EU-US Privacy Shield”.

Today the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) issued its judgment in the Max Schrems case in which it declared the European Commission’s decision on Safe Harbor as invalid. The Commission’s decision in 2000 found that companies participating in the US Department of Commerce Safe Harbor framework were operating under an “adequate” data protection regime and could thus rely on the Safe Harbor as a permissible basis to transfer personal information from the EU to the US. The judgment comes less than two weeks after the publication of the opinion from Advocate General Bot in which he advised that national Data Protection Authorities (“DPAs”) must be able to investigate an individual request to suspend data flows to the US by a company certified under the Safe Harbor scheme, and in which he also found the Safe Harbor scheme to be invalid.